As the title of Oldd Wvrm‘s new album suggests, the music is an exploration of dark and obscure dimensions, dimensions that seem beyond the perception of a mundane mind grounded in what passes for “reality”. It carries our imaginations into a desolate and haunted dream world where shape-shifting avatars of misery dwell, in the company of wraiths that have lost their memories, and any path that might lead them to another, more welcoming, place.

The album is composed of five unusually long tracks, and as might be expected of such extensive journeys, the feelings in the music change over their courses, revealing both moodiness and mounting tension, inconsolable grief and aimless anger, glimmering wistfulness and extravagant, even magisterial, anguish. The power (and volume) of the sound also ebbs and flows — dramatically, but fluidly — but never really shows you a way back to the waking world.

Codex Tenebris will soon be released (on February 15th) the Irish label Cursed Monk Records, but you won’t have to wait ’til then to become ensorceled by the album, because we have a full stream for you now. Continue reading »

If I were compelled to choose one word to describe Ignobilis, the new album by Belgium’s Oldd Wvrms, it would be “psychoactive”. Yes, I mean that in the sense that it has powerful hallucinogenic properties akin to those of certain trance-inducing chemicals, but the music is capable of producing visions even for those who don’t have a taste for tripping. It sets the imagination roaming through esoteric landscapes populated by visions of witches and warlocks gathered at woodland rituals, shrouded in aromatic smoke and lit by the rising embers of preternatural flames. Or at least that’s what I imagine.

Ignobilis was preceded by two EPs that Oldd Wvrms released in 2015 (Mater Serpentum and NØT) and a full-length named Ritae released earlier this year, which includes the band’s two EPs plus three previously unreleased tracks — re-recorded, remixed, and remastered with the band’s new singer. Since then, the band and that vocalist have parted ways, leaving a trio on this new album consisting of drummer Cho, bassist Oli, and guitarist Ben. In place of the kind of vocals that appeared on the band’s last release, they have added different voices that mesh with and enhance the music’s hallucinatory qualities. Continue reading »